(T)o judge by SACS's laundry list of areas in which the new institution is falling short of the accreditor's requirements and standards, UT Rio Grande Valley appears to be a work in progress.

A spokeswoman for SACS cited a full 10 major areas in which the new Texas campus had faltered, including such basic things as assuring that it “operates with integrity in all areas.” Other areas of difficulty included complying with federal financial aid audits and ensuring that the institution's degrees are based on instruction it offers itself (rather than by other institutions).

My reaction might be summarized as: “Holy sh*t.” I mean, to be accused of a lack of integrity? Judging from the quote above, it appears to be section 1.1, which would make it literally the first thing on the list that universities are supposed to do. I have heard, but not confirmed, that there is a lower level of concern, “warning.” If there is, we kind of blew past that.

UTRGV is not the only university on the list, as Inside Higher Ed notes. There are nine others, but UTRGV is unusual in that it is part of a state university system, serves the most students, and was launched with very high goals of creating a new research university.

What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall of the University of Texas System board rooms these days.

At the start of the semester, the UT system was praising UTRGV for its first year, which it called “stellar.”

The Rider also reports the faculty senate will be meeting with the president soon.

Update, 9 December 2016: Local newspaper The Monitor wrote an unusually pissy editorial complaining that SACS should have released all the details of the concerns that put the institution on probation, and demanding more information.

Meanwhile, mark your calendars for 15 December, when SACS is planning on posting more about the issue:

(Pamela Cravey) said her agency will post “a public disclosure statement” on its website on Dec. 15 providing additional insight.

These statements include an update and explanation of actions taken and what it means for the institution, but the violations are not typically listed, based on statements currently available.

Another update, 9 December 2016: The Faculty Senate emailed the faculty today after meeting with President Bailey. They described the situation thus:

The concerns shared at this point in time center on the transfer of UTB students to UTRGV to meet the expectations of the timeline set by Texas legislature. It took longer for Texas Southmost College to gain independent accreditation than expected. If UTB had been abolished on August 31, 2015 (the date UTPA was abolished), all TSC students would have lost their financial aid. This meant that UTB could not be abolished until a later date even though it had no students. ...

We found President Bailey to be very straightforward about the situation. He provided us with detailed documented timelines starting in July 2013 through September 2016. Our institutions had been in communication with SACSCOC consistently throughout this process. He reassured us that there are no concerns with faculty, programs, students or financial aid.

06 December 2016

University president Guy Bailey sent an email to the campus today informing us that the university had been placed on probation by SACS, the regional accrediting agency.

The reasons for this are not clear. When I went to the SACS website, there are no details about this that I could find. Bailey referred to some “timing issues” around the separation of legacy university, UT Brownsville, from Texas Southmost College. But how that split affects the sort of things accreditation is supposed to measure, like financial stability, instructor qualifications, adequate assessment, it not at all clear.

UTRGV has to stay accredited. It’s just non-negotiable for students, faculty, and administration. A non-accredited university is just a diploma mill, and has no real standing.

More details are supposedly coming next month. So this is a story to watch closely.

05 December 2016

At the National Review, Julie Kelly says scientists should stop playing politics.

I’d be fine with that if politicians stopped playing scientist.

How many times have we seen politicians expressing opinions about the facts around scientific issues? Not policy issues around science, or funding science, or anything else that is a legitimate domain of politicians, “polisplaining” scientists. Politicians throwing snowballs to claim “global warming isn’t real” kind of stuff.

Kelly warns that the public doesn’t trust scientists on some issues. The article kind of implies that public trust in scientists is in freefall. But in most polls in developed countries, scientists regularly come out as one of the most trusted professions.

In the United Kingdom, poll results came out today putting scientists as one of the most trusted professions. Politicians in general? Last.

In the United States, the poll phrasing isn’t quite equivalent. Even so, college teachers (which, since most scientists are professors, is reasonably close) got more than 50% of people rating them as very trustworthy, while members of Congress rated 8%.

While public trust in scientists is higher than that of politicians, I do agree that scientists should want to keep public trust. That’s important. But if the public doesn’t trust scientists on some issues, whose fault is that? There are documented cases of deliberate, politically motivated disinformation campaigns to convince people not to trust scientists. And that came from the political right.

04 December 2016

My campus is about 85% Hispanic, and we are one of the closest to the US/Mexico border. So we have an unusual perspective on a lot of issues concerning immigration. I’m mostly just quoting this story because I think it’s going to be an interesting one in the next few months.

The Faculty Senate of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley unanimously passed a resolution Friday endorsing the idea of a sanctuary campus. ... The resolution was passed in response to a recent petition signed by more than 1,500 students that asks President Guy Bailey to prohibit campus police or immigration authorities from asking students about immigration status.

My prediction is that President Bailey will do nothing. Because:

Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted in opposition to “sanctuary campuses” Thursday vowing to cut state funding from any state institution that assumes a sanctuary status.

As far as I’ve been able to observe, money seems to be President Bailey’s major motivator for doing anything as an adminstrator. Even the threat of losing state money will probably be enough to ensure compliance from institutions.

The Vice President of Young Republicans at UTRGV Jaime Garcia called the petition reckless.
“We could have stayed UTPA and UTB but we merged to get access to the funds that the bigger schools get here in Texas,” Garcia said.

Non sequiter. I don’t see how the merger is related to any of these issues. It’s also frustrating to see a petition – names on a piece of paper – one of the most notoriously sedate forms of political activism there is, being branded as “reckless.”

Update, 5 December 2016: Called it.

“There is no problem right now, and so, you stand a much greater chance of creating a problem if you make that declaration,” (UTRGV President Guy) Bailey said in an interview Wednesday.

Let’s not take a stand because something might happen. Gah.

Additional, 5 December 2016: In an email to faculty, the faculty senate noted of its resolution:

We do not use the term “University Sanctuary”, but do support our students, faculty and staff. ... We felt that we needed to step-up and not wait until later. We want everyone to know where we stand on this issue.

Well... they do use “Sanctuary campus” to describe what other institutions have done. Here’s the text:

WHEREAS the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) has a mission to “Transform the Rio Grande Valley” through an “accessible educational environment;”

WHEREAS, UTRGV has a goal to foster sustainable community-university relationships and lists “Diversity, Access, and Inclusion” as values;

WHEREAS the Senate and our academic community and peers across the country are concerned about the recent increase in hate crimes and inflammatory language around the United States since the presidential campaign;

WHEREAS there have been repeated examples of threats against women, LGBTQIA-identified individuals, specific ethnic and religious groups, and immigrants during and after a divisive presidential election;

WHEREAS the U.S. president elect has openly discussed eliminating the DACA program that supports our undocumented students and has championed the rapid increase in the deportation of undocumented immigrant community members which could negatively impact our community, our students and their families, our staff and their families, our faculty and friends;

WHEREAS UTRGV has a goal to “Cultivate a welcoming, inclusive, and nurturing climate for all faculty and staff” including a commitment to “foster a supportive family-friendly climate;”

WHEREAS the president-elect has campaigned on banning Muslims from entering the United States and his cabinet members have in the past suggested a registry of Muslim American citizens;

WHEREAS UTRGV has a focus on Globalization with a goal to “Foster a globally-connected university culture” with an initiative to “Increase the number of global partnerships that align with university priorities;”

WHEREAS UTRGV and its students have benefitted from the 2001 decision signed by Rick Perry that allows undocumented students to establish residency and enjoy in-state tuition, and later he and the Texas legislature allowed these students some access to the Texas Grant program, decisions which increased access to educational opportunities in our community;

WHEREAS over 28 university campuses have declared their campuses Sanctuary Campuses and many more (over 100) in the process of declaring;

WHEREAS UTRGV has the highest number of Senate Bill students in Texas;

THEREFORE, be it resolved that UTRGV be designated an All-Inclusive Campus, where all Vaquer@s are welcomed and supported.

To that end, the Faculty Senate of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, call upon the university administration to take the following actions and/or make these assurances, to the extent legally possible:

that the university assign a specific administrative office to assist our DACA students and other students who lack the protections of citizenship on a strictly confidential basis.

that the administration send a clear, public message that UTRGV will not tolerate xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, Islamophobic, and racist comments and actions on campus, and that we as a university will not tolerate religious persecution or the trivialization of sexual assault.

that the university continue its efforts towards being an allied campus and continue its trainings and inclusivity initiatives for LGBTQIA-identified students, faculty, and staff.

that the university avoid compliance with a registry of Muslim citizens, and that the university carry on with its pre-election (11/8/16) processes for admitting international students.

that the university make a public commitment to continue protecting student privacy and announce an assurance that it not release any records regarding the immigration status of students and their family members to institutions or authorities who would restrict a student’s opportunity for a quality education.

that the university publicly advocate for the continued resident tuition designation for undocumented students and Texas Grant consideration for Dreamer students at the forthcoming state legislative sessions.

that campus police will not question anyone’s immigration status or religious affiliation, nor will it enter into systematic partnerships or agreements with outside agencies, including ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, to question the legal status or religious affiliation of our students, faculty, or staff.

02 December 2016

There was been much hand-wringing in political discussion the last few weeks about how we are living in a “post fact” world dominated by “fake news.”

Well, hi-di-ho, people, welcome to science education and science communication of the last few decades.

Fake news? Evolutionary biologists have been putting up with it people saying things like, “There are no transitional fossils” for-frickin’-ever. Even when you show them Archaeopteryx. We’ve been putting up with the Discovery Institute and Answers in Genesis who attack established science and chug along regardless of scientific facts and countless debunkings.

We’ve been through the argument that “If only people knew the facts, people would act different. The facts speak for themselves,” and seen how that has failed, and failed, and failed to budge public opinion on some of the best understood science out there. Unfortunately, even amoung scientists, this is “The facts speak for themselves” attitude is still common. People who say otherwise, like Randy Olson and Matthew C. Nisbet, have received way more ciriticism for pointing this out than they deserve.

Now the same strategies are not just confined to being deployed in a few hot button scientific topics, they’ve metastasized over the whole body politic in multiple countries.

It’s to our shame that we science educators and science communicators didn’t figure out effective ways to deal with those kinds of issues.

Additional, 5 December 2016: A new piece in the Guardian about how algorithms are delivering news on the Internet convinces me that, in some ways, what we’re seeing in qualitatively different from the misinformation that scientists have faced for the past decade. It’s deeper and more organized.

I think there are still powerful lessons from science communication, though: when trying to persuade, facts alone are not very persuasive.

I worry that policy wonks will go through the same long battles over “facts” and “evidence” that scientists have, and just believe that the facts will speak for themselves. They won’t. Facts need fierce advocates.